The Devil's Footprint (81 page)

All Oshima had
to do to gain was to elude her pursuers for a few hours, and then the advantage
would pass to her.

The light
increased, and Fitzduane strained to see what was up ahead.

Suddenly, he
thought he could see something.
 
He wiped
the sweat from his face and tried again.
 
This time he was sure.
 
Over a
thousand meters ahead, he could see the faintest shape of a running
figure.
 
There were supposed to be two,
but he could detect no sign of a second figure.

It was running
down an open, boulder-strewn valley.
 
The
hills on either side looked as if they had been made by some giant dumping
buckets of jagged rocks at random.
 
The
nearest incline was about eight hundred meters away.

It went
against all of Fitzduane's training to move exposed through such terrain, but
if they wanted to keep up with their quarry there was no other option.

He longed for
the reassuring shapes of a couple of Kiowas, but several had sustained damage
in the storm and one was not due for another half hour.

Up ahead,
Tennant stumbled and fell.
 
Two seconds
later, the second runner collapsed.

"SNIPER!"
he shouted.

As he fell to
the ground, he saw that the man immediately in front of him had been hit by the
third shot.
 
He crawled forward.
 
The trooper had been struck at an angle below
the breastbone.
 
His face was gray, and
as Fitzduane approached, blood frothed from his mouth and he died.
 
The man's name was Zalinski.
 
He was one of Scout Platoon's snipers.
 
His M24 lay beside him.

Fitzduane
searched the high ground.
 
The wound on
the dead trooper looked as if it had been made by a 7.62mm.
 
Three shots and three hits suggested a custom
sniper rifle and a shooting talent enough to yield a world of woe.
 
The angle suggested the hills to the left.

The jagged
rocks offered endless options.

All around him
paratroopers were firing single shots at possible firing positions in the
rocks.
 
Using iron sights at that range,
they would be lucky to score a hit even if they could see a target.
 
But a round could get lucky.
 
At least it would help keep the sniper's head
down.

If they did
nothing, they were going to get picked off one by one.

Bent double,
using the cover of the return fire, Brock ran up.

"Shit!"
he said quietly when he saw Zalinkski.
 
He looked at Fitzduane.
 
"I
hope that damn woman's worth it."

Gallo was
about twenty meters away.
 
He studied the
distant rocks,
then
closed his eyes.

Brock said
nothing.
 
He watched the performance and
then crawled toward Gallo.
 
The man's
eyes opened.
 
"Got him?
"
Brock asked.

"Think
so," said Gallo.
 
"The tall
butte is my twelve.
 
Go to ten, drop
twenty meters and look at the ledge below the skyline."

Brock had
picked up the dead paratrooper's M24 and was studying the rocks through the
telescopic sight.
 
"Negative,"
he said.

"Fucker's
pulled back," said Gallo.
 
"Wait one and you'll see."

"Hold
your fire," shouted Brock.
 
The
command was passed along the firing line.
 
He pulled a set of spotter's binoculars from his pocket and called Fitzduane
over, and tossed the glasses in his direction.

Fitzduane
moved to within ten meters and took the glasses.
 
He did not like coming even that
close
, since bunched-up targets brought out a mean streak in
hostiles.
 
On the other hand,
countersniper work was a collaborative effort.

Brock and
Gallo were glued to the eyepieces of their rifles.
 
Their problem now was that their angle of
vision was severely restricted.
 
A
spotter would cover a wider field and then talk the shooters onto target.
 
He would keep an eye out for other
opposition.

Fitzduane
focused where instructed.
 
Thirty seconds
later, he saw movement twenty meters to the right of where Gallo had originally
indicated.

The enemy
sniper was moving every couple of shots.

"Right
twenty," said Fitzduane.

Gallo fired,
followed a fraction of a second later by Brock.

Fitzduane saw
a slight movement as a long black shape dropped off the ledge.

"He's
dropped his rifle," he said.

Galle
's eyes were
closed.
 
"We got him," he said.

Fitzduane
scanned the rocks.
 
There could be
another sniper, but only two had got through and one was ahead.
 
He thought of Oshima increasing her lead in
front of them.

"We're
going on," he said to Brock.

Brock opened
his mouth to say something and then thought better of it.
 
"Airborne, sir," he said.

He rose to his
feet.
 
"Move out," he said.

The survivors
of Scout Platoon rose to their feet.
 
He
had logged three dead.
 
The RT operator
had taken a round, making it four.

Fitzduane was
already running.

Brock and his
men followed on.
 
They left the bodies
where they lay.
 
Brock felt numb.
 
The drove him on.
 
Hate for Oshima and, as of the moment, a
profound and irrational hate for Fitzduane.

The interlude
had bought Oshima thirteen minutes and had cost five lives.

Up on the
ledge, Jin Endo lay sprawled with a 7.62 round through the bridge of his nose
and the back of his skull missing.

Brock's round
had torn out his throat.

Up above, the
vultures were already circling.
 
Soon two
extra black dots swept toward the corpse but kept on going.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Oshima crested
the hill and looked backward.
 
In the
distance she could see her pursuers.
 
They were now too far behind to catch up, she was certain.
 
She turned and ran for a further ten
minutes.
 
She stopped at a pile of rocks
and began to pull them aside.
 
Behind the
rocks there was earth and then camouflage netting.

She worked
furiously.
 
Soon a 250cc motorcycle was
uncovered.
 
The fuel tank was full and
the panniers were full of supplies.
 
There were other caches up ahead.
 
She now had everything she needed to escape.

She unclipped
field glasses and surveyed the terrain.
 
The paratroopers were still out of sight, probably still sweating up the
hill in their heavy equipment.

The sky was
overcast.
 
The weather was still on her
side.
 
All she could see were black
specks in the distance.

Vultures were
heading for where Jin Endo and the paratroopers he had killed.
 
It was a good end and he had served his
purpose, but Oshima felt a slight twinge as she remembered his devotion and his
ardor.
 
Endo had touched her.
 
It was as well he was dead.

Oshima kicked
her motorcycle into life and headed off down into the gorge.
 
She had picked the route carefully.
 
The rock overhung the gorge for some
considerable distance and made the dry wadi in the bottom invisible from the
air.
 
She had outdistanced her pursuers
behind her and was now safe from discovery by aerial reconnaissance.
 
She was going to make it.

One woman and
the might of the famous 82
^nd
Airborne Division, and she was going to
triumph.

She entered the
gorge and felt the protection of the rock above fold over her.
 
The sky was blotted out.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

"Where?"
said Gannon.

Palmer
indicated the spot on the map.

"Fitzduane
know?"

"Airborne,
sir," said Palmer.

Gannon walked
away from the map.
 
Weather conditions
were lousy and the wind was higher than he liked.
 
But this damn terrorist was the core of all
this bloodshed, and there was nothing worse than a mission half done.
 
Politicians liked to call a halt before the
job was finished, but about the only good thing he could find to think about
the Devil's Footprint and the Tecuno plateau was that there were absolutely no
politicians around.

"What
do the air force
say?" said Gannon.

"You know
the C130 jocks," said Palmer.
 
"Anywhere, anytime."

"Let's do
it," said Gannon.
 
He walked toward
the door.
 
Behind him, Palmer was already
on the radio passing the word.

The C130's
were going hot.
 
Inside, paratroopers
were racked like peas in a pod.
 
The
dirty yellow sand of the Tecuno plateau filled the air as the four turboprops
cut in.

Gannon missed
the red earth of
North Carolina
.
 
Fort
Bragg
was not everyone's
idea of the place to be, but if you wore a maroon beret it was something
special.
 
Soon someone else would get the
division, and hell, he was going to miss the place.
 
Jumping out of perfectly good aircraft was
just something that got in your blood.

Gannon turned
around.
 
"Dave?" he said.

"Sir?"
said Palmer.

"Last
jump you made you never quite got around to putting on your ‘chute," said
Gannon.
 
"How would you like to make
one the old-fashioned way — like we taught you?"

Colonel Dave
Palmer grinned.
 
"Nor sure I
remember, General."

"Let's
go," said Gannon.
 
"I'll remind
you on the way down."

Kitted out,
Gannon and Palmer waddles up the ramp.

Black and
green faces stared at them.

Gannon scanned
them.
 
They looked frightening.
 
God knows why you would want to love these
aggressive young people, but he did.
 
They kept the MPs run off their feet, drank like camels, turned
Fayetteville
into
something out of the Wild West, and fucked anything that moved.

But they kept
the faith.
 
Not too many people seemed to
do that these days.
 
His gaze stopped at
one face that did not normally belong.

"Padre,"
he said.

"General,"
said the padre.
 
Under the camouflage he
was looking decidedly guilty.
 
He had not
been rostered.

Gannon studied
him.
 
"Just remember to catch
Colonel Palmer," he said.

"Airborne,
General
," said the padre with relief.

"When he
hits the ground," said Gannon.

"HOOAH,
SIR!" said the padre and a planeload of paratroops.

The ramps came
up.
 
The C130s rolled.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The copilot
got out of his seat reluctantly but without demur.
 
The two-man Kiowa Warrior crews were a tight
team.
 
He did not grudge the Irishman his
seat, but he was concerned about letting his crew chief down.

"Your
friend still tracking?" said Fitzduane as he buckled in.

"Roger
that, sir," said the crew chief as the Kiowa took off.
 
"Call sign Viper Two."

High above,
Viper Two focused his high-resolution TV camera on the speeding motorbike until
it vanished under an overhang.

Fitzduane
listened to the communications between the two helicopters while watching the
ground recede in the distance.

Brock's face
was an unreadable mask.
 
Cochrane raised
his weapon in farewell.

"The
target's vanished, sir," said the crew chief.

Fitzduane's
heart gave a lurch.

"Have you
ever flown really low, sir?" said the crew chief.

"I hate
heights," said Fitzduane.

"A lot of
Airborne do," said the crew chief.
 
"Funny thing, when you think about it."

The Kiowa
roared over the crest of the hill and then dropped down as it headed into what
looked from the helicopter's perspective like a tunnel.

"Relax,
Colonel," said the crew chief.
 
"Unless you get claustrophobia."